page 1-45 freedom and censorship of the college press
Preface/ chapter 1 Freedom and Censorship of the College Press
Newspapers face pressure from the administration and many other high sources. They talk of what is “in good taste” and “in the best interest” of the school.
The function of the paper needs to be determined in order to be able to put controls on it.
College newspapers often try to apply those standards, rules and principles applicable to a “normal” community, to a community which in fact is not normal i.e. College newspapers page 2
One of the functions is that of the Governmental watchdog.
The newspaper represents a viewpoint. Who does it represent? The student? The administration? Does it depend on where the money comes from? No.
The college community differs from a normal community because the student body is transitory in a college community, and culturally, the college community is richer and more sophisticated than the normal community page 5
The Commission on the Freedom of the Press requires:
A thorough account of the days events in an intelligent factual manner
A place for the exchange of comment and criticism
The presentation and clarification of the goal and values of society
The projection of a representative picture of a constituent groups in society
Full access to the day’s intelligence (limited in college community)
Hopkins list of concepts for newspaper
Administration view the paper as a official publication
The faculty views the paper as a medium of publicity
The student organization views it as house organ of the student government
Journalism students view it as their own
The journalism professor views it as a lab for training students
Journalism student opinion usually questions administration control and student government control and by inference almost always assigns a normal press function.
Page 8
Five functions of paper:
Official publication
Publicity medium for the faculty
Publicity medium for the student government
Journal of opinion for the student editors
A journalism training laboratory
Layout is important. Which stories go where and what is the process in deciding?
What is a College newspaper page 14.
The objectives of the college newspaper are to help the students and the College understand each other, encourage cooperation between faculty and student body, promote a better understanding of journalistic practices and ethics. The paper is the servant of the college. The principles should be guided by the fact that all of the information must serve the best interests of the college.
Question: What about the Emmanuel story? It wasn’t I the best interest of the faculty, the administration or “potential donors” but in the interest of students to know about it. How do we justify this as in the best interests of the whole community?
This is interesting… page 16 the paper should limit its criticisms to academic matters and not meddle in matters of the administration with out permission of the parties concerned. WHAT IS UP WITH THIS? If the administration is being shady we won’t ask to print it but we will ask their comments on it.
The student paper should not only be concerned with student interests alone, but of those of faculty and community.
On page 17 the writer mentions that the paper should not be a crusading institution that must work for the betterment of mankind and engender new thoughts…. Why not? I don’t like how the author keeps mentioning the paper as needing to have SCHOOL SPIRIT and PR leg for the college. We don’t need school spirit.
No propaganda in the paper.
The author states that censorship can be used when a writer opposes the college. I agree with the side note…. Pig shit.
I disagree with what is said on page 21 where the author states that it is a waste of space to include world news in the paper because professional are better than amateurs.
Question: Why wouldn’t we include world news that is important to our community and age group?
To make a college an educational instrument the university must pledge:
No censorship of the news or editorial columns
The employment of a competent educator-journalist as advisor to the news staff
Adequate financing in the form of subsidies.
I think that our administration and student government should sign one of these to ensure that the student government or admin. Can’t try to stop us.
On page 23, the primary reason most student newspapers are so bad is that that administration on the great majority of campuses oppose a free student press.
Some colleges want papers to print only the good news, making the school look better. The paper prints news whether or not it’s good or bad. It’s our job as journalists. It’s our job to go beyond the facts, get a whole story, ask questions and search for answers.
** Page 28 the administration must finance the paper!** the subsidy should be with out strings and generous. The financial burden should not be passed on to the students by way of high activity fees.
The system for selecting editors should be from the newspaper staff, the media board or can nominate themselves with references.
Approaches to Lab newspapers: page 32
They must:
Acquaint students with current problems, trends, and personalities of mass media
Introduce students to leaders in a professional situation
Develop sense of sophistication about mass media
Provide first hand training in newsgathering writing and display materials.
Build confidence in student to handle problem in a professional way.
Realize by products like training for a job, education, professional performance etc.
Lab publications can have influence on 1) journalism education, in advancing the professional standards of our work, and 2) on the journalism profession, in advancing its standards as well. Page 33
There are different approaches to the Lab publications. Some use the modified segregated approach where the author states, “ a student press must be free to make mistakes because it is the best way to achieve maturity and promotes freedom in thought.
The Integrated approach is having a paper published at a school with professional journalism program, daily newspapers that have close ties to professional work in field of journalism.
The Daily Iowan has a lot of MONEY and a lot of participation.
The Modified Integrated Approach
A faculty advisor serves as newspaper advisor and teaches a news-editorial sequence. Page 44
A class of sorts is used to help coverage and education of journalistic ways. The success depends on the cooperation between the advisor and student editors, who usually aren’t involved in the lab course. Page 45
Question: Is the paper going to require the 07-08 staff to take part in the class? I would like to see more help from the journalism class and from the travel writing, feature writing classes so we can have a bigger base of writers. It only seems right to have the journalism classes take part in the paper.
posted by Krista @ 12:08 AM
2 Comments:
Hi Krista,
From your reading, and interpretation of it, I see that you are beginning to understand how the function of a college newspaper can be so easily misunderstood. We are a representative of our community -- and who is our community? All of the groups that might have different agendas for what we should write: the students, the government, the administration, the faculty members, the alumni, the donors ... all want and need different information from us. We walk quite a line, but we can also try our best to cater to all of those groups, while still remaining fair and impartial. (That's why I thought it was OK to offer the student government a column -- they are part of our community, and should have a voice -- but not a page, because that's taking over the press, which is a no-no.)
And as a writing professor, I admit that I see the newspaper as a lab where you can practice your craft. It's the most stressful kind of lab, though, because when you make a mistake in the classroom, you just don't get an A or say "oops" and learn from it. Make a mistake in the newspaper, and you could cause a crisis in your community. You could libel someone, or offer wrong information to a community that trusts you, who won't trust you the next time -- you just gotta be as perfect as you can. Every time. That's big stress, and is part of the reason why many writers won't go near journalism.
You mention that the administration doesn't like "bad" news -- and I don't think anyone does, although it is our job to give the bad news when the community needs to know it. That said, do you think we do a good job of offering ALL of the news? I know we've missed several "good" news stories that also represent our community, stories about students who've succeeded or someone who has done a charitable service. That's news too, even if it feels like PR, because our community needs to know that good things happen in our world.
This is a struggle that all newspapers face. News agents do tend to focus on the negative news -- people tend to read it more, and it's not usually news that things are going well in the world. (Because that's just a "normal" day.) We want to be taken seriously, and we don't think we will if we offer "cute, happy" stories -- that's supposed to be PR. But I would point at the career of Katie Couric, who's covered EVERYTHING, and is one of the most-recognized journalists of our time. She'll cover a wedding and then turn around and cover Iraq. A good journalist will do it all -- because someone in the community will want the information.
I don't agree with all of the information in the reading here either -- we should be able to question anyone in our community if the situation warrants it, and we're not cheerleaders, although most journalists do the job because they honestly care about their community and want to see it properly cared for.
Finally, you asked about where our journalism sequence is going in the future. There is talk of making it bigger, especially since there are many communication students who want the journalism classes to help round out their education. I can't say much more than that right now, but when I know for sure, I'll let you know.
No, the practicum isn't required for students who want to work for the newspaper next year -- but it sure won't hurt students to take the practicum, and it could well be that the practicum is required in the future. Because we're no longer considering ourselves a club, I also don't think it should be considered a place "where we just work for the work/study money" -- our role in the community is too important to not understand your role at the newspaper, nor to want to get better. (I'm not pointing a finger at anyone here, of course, just passing information on.) And as the Triton continues to improve and get better, I think it's only fair that those who care enough about journalism to take the classes and the practicum to get the important positions.
I just realized I forgot to answer your question about the Emmanuel story. Why was that news? How do we justify this as in the best interests of the whole community?
It is because a crime was committed against our community, a felonious crime, where the person who was alleged to have done it was allowed to remain in the community. People have a right to protect themselves. However, we do also have to weigh student rights to privacy -- although I feel we did.
However, we now need to look at the bigger picture. We said that Emmanuel was going to be our first crime story, but that we were now committed to writing all news stories about students who commit major felonies -- and did we do this? Do you feel, for instance, we adequately covered the spraypainting story? We didn't follow up on the fact that the students were expelled, or give them a chance to tell their stories. And, as it was rightly pointed out to us, there are a lot of students who've been charged with crimes since the Emmanuel case -- and they've gone by. I know that we don't hear about everything, but our news coverage isn't Again, we have to be careful, and perhaps should talk as a staff about how we plan to cover these types of stories in the future.
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